Boys & Girls Club of Taunton marks 100 years on Court Street

The Boys & Girls Club of Taunton is now observing its 100th anniversary at its present location on Court Street. “A hundred years later, I think we are just as important if not more important as an institution in the community,” said Jon Carvalho, development director for the Boys & Girls Club of Taunton. ̶...

A downtown nonprofit in Taunton is celebrating more than a century of serving local youth.

The Boys & Girls Club of Taunton is now observing its 100th anniversary at its present location on Court Street.

“A hundred years later, I think we are just as important if not more important as an institution in the community,” said Jon Carvalho, development director for the Boys & Girls Club of Taunton. “I think some things may have changed on the surface, but we still remain dedicated to the main principals of serving the youth of Taunton.”

The organization is making its 100th anniversary the theme of this year’s annual Boys & Girls Club of Taunton Dinner on Nov. 21, which is open to the public.

The featured speaker at the event is Boston basketball great Cedric Maxwell, whose number 31 was retired by the Celtics after he played a key role in two of the team’s NBA championships in the ’80s, which included winning the Finals MVP award in 1981. Maxwell is now the color commentator for Celtics radio broadcasts, which he has been doing since 2007.

Carvalho, who recently did research for the 100th anniversary celebration, said that the Boys & Girls Club of Taunton has actually been in the city for 111 years, but this year marks a century for the club in its present location. Carvalho said that during the 11 years prior, after the organization became one of the founding Boys & Girls Clubs 9 in the country, it was located at another building across the street, currently the site of a municipal parking lot.

Carvalho found a copy of the Taunton organization’s 1908 annual report, which gave its operating budget as $2,282. Now, Carvalho said, the operating budget for the Taunton Boys & Girls Club is $1 million.

“There are in every community, boys running wild in the streets,” said a section from the 1908 report filed by the organization, which used to be known simply as The Boys’ Club and served only boys up until the late 1980s. “The Boys’ Club of Taunton is to save these from bad influences. … A large number of the young population of Taunton, with its ever present temptations of the streets and other places of unwholesome nature, need to be harbored to a solid stand of good citizenship.”

The Boys & Girls Club of Taunton went through one of its biggest changes in the early ’70s, when the organization added a gym, a pool and a back recreation room.

“That’s when we more then doubled in size,” Carvalho said. “That was one big renovation.”The renovation was made possible through $400,000 in funds from the federal department of Housing and Urban Development, while the rest of the $200,000 needed came from donations from the community.

“It gave us the extra room we so desperately needed,” Carvalho said. “It’s been a while since we renovated.”

Page 2 of 3 - Now, the Taunton Boys & Girls Club is at a point where it is considering the future of the organization and its aging building.

“We are looking at getting a strategic plan in January so that we, as a board, staff and an organization, can come together and determine where we want to go as far as the building itself,” said Jill Precopio, executive director of the Taunton Boys & Girls Club, who was hired earlier this year.

“Being 100 years old, the building definitely needs renovation. We’re starting to have some space challenges, as we are starting to serve more and more youth. … We definitely will have some challenges as far as the building is concerned in the next three to five years.”

Precopio said annual membership is now close to 1,000, although there are 500 members signed up so far this year, at the beginning of the after-school program season. (In 1908, the active membership was 256.) While the enrollment is relatively large already, the Taunton Boys & Girls Club hopes to grow more, she said.

“Today we have more youth to serve because there are more families, and more working single-parent families, than ever before,” Precopio said. “We recently kicked off a team program to try to retain more members after the age of 12, where we see a decline in our membership. Some youngsters may continue with swim team, or floor hockey, but not the afterschool program. It’s the same mission and its grown in scope.”

Dan DaRosa, who grew up playing floor hockey at the Taunton Boys & Girls Club, said that he has seen the organization grow through the years and has served local youth that have gone on to lead successful lives.

“There are so many city councilors, local professionals and successful businesspeople who have gone through the Boys & Girls Club,” said DaRosa, who is a member of the organization’s board of directors. DaRosa said that he has been among adults who grew up in the Boys & Girls Club, and that they always share similar childhood experiences about having fun and playing sports there.

DaRosa, now president of B&D construction, said like many local youth, when he was a kid he received a free membership to the Boys & Girls Club because his “mother and father couldn’t afford to send us there.”

DaRosa said some things have changed from a cultural perspective at the Boys & Girls Club since his time as a kid there. For instance, kids used to be able to just walk out of the building, without notice or supervision, to buy a pizza down the street. But in essence the spirit of the organization remains the same.

“The organization still serves the underprivileged,” DaRosa said. “Our mission is very different from most organizations out there. We try to make it a safe place to be and serve the underprivileged.”

Page 3 of 3 - For more information about the Boys & Girls Club of Taunton’s 11th annual dinner, being held Nov. 21, at 5 p.m. at the Holiday Inn in Taunton, call the Boys & Girls Club at 508-824-4341. All proceeds from the event will go toward the programs at the Boys & Girls Club of Taunton.

“We truly rely on the community to support us and sustain our operations,” Precopio said. “Without community support in the future obviously we won’t be able to survive.”